I was driving home after a gig yesterday, listening to WXNA low power FM community radio in Nashville. I heard an ad for an old movie from 1968 starring Dean Stockwell. It was called Psych-Out. Here’s my selection of key sentences from the movie’s Wiki…
Psych-Out (1968) is a counterculture-era psychedelic film about hippies, psychedelic music, and recreational drugs, produced and released by American International Pictures. Originally scripted as The Love Children, the title when tested caused people to think it was about bastards, so Samuel Z. Arkoff came up with the ultimate title based on a recent successful reissue of Psycho…
Jenny (played by Susan Strasberg) is a deaf runaway who arrives in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, searching for her brother Steve. She encounters the aptly named Stoney (Jack Nicholson) and his hippie band “Mumblin’ Jim” in a coffee shop…
The group discovers an artist friend, Warren (Henry Jaglom), the man who designs the psychedelic posters advertising the band, freaking out badly in his gallery, apparently on STP. He sees everyone, including himself, as walking dead and tries to cut off his own (to him festering) hand with a circular saw. While they help him, Jenny notices a large sculpture resembling abstract flames in a corner and recognizes it as her brother’s work. The gallery owner says the artist is known as “The Seeker”, a kind of itinerant preacher. He suggests that they ask ex-band member Dave (Dean Stockwell) about The Seeker’s current whereabouts…Dave lives in the attic of a downtown warehouse. He is less than thrilled to see Stoney, but sympathetic to Jenny…
Dave’s information leads the gang to a junkyard, where the mystery of “Jess Saes” is revealed; it is a sign reading “Jesus Saves”, with some letters missing. The “sugar cube” slogan is painted on the side of a car which Jenny recognizes as her brother’s…
Jenny’s friendship with Stoney has become sexual (she does not know that he has a reputation for one-night stands and a refusal to commit to or care about any woman). She attends a mock funeral staged by a large group of hippies, with background music by The Seeds…
The Seeker (Bruce Dern) has returned to the art gallery to pick up his sculpture. Challenged by Stoney, he pleads that the work should not be touched; it is actually not meant to be art, but a shrine. He believes that God spoke to him and asked him to create the piece.
The performance at the Ballroom is a success; Mumblin’ Jim play, along with the Strawberry Alarm Clock…
In her grief and confusion, she runs up to the roof, hallucinating wildly of flames and explosions. She apparently jumps into a reservoir.
Here’s Psych-Out…
Stay Awake!
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